Democrats make education revisions to 2016 platform — and a key reformer is furious
In an unexpected move, Democrats have revised the K-12 education section of their party’s 2016 platform in important ways, backing the right of parents to opt their children out of high-stakes standardized tests, qualifying support for charter schools, and opposing using test scores for high-stakes purposes to evaluate teachers and students.
Some of the changes are being welcomed by public school advocates who have been fighting corporate school reform, which includes standardized test-based accountability systems and the expansion of charter schools. Many of these activists have been worried that Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would back corporate reform, just as the Obama administration has. While it isn’t clear exactly what she will do if she becomes president — as platform language does not necessarily translate into policy — supporters of those reforms are furious at the changes, highlighting a rift in the party over how to improve K-12 education.
One of them, Shavar Jeffries, president of the Democrats for Education Reform, an influential political action committee supported heavily by hedge fund managers favoring charter schools, merit-pay tied to test scores and related reforms, issued a statement that went so far as to say that the original draft on education was “progressive and balanced” but that the new language “threatens to roll back” President Obama’s education legacy. (See full statement below.)
Negotiators on the platform committee met this past weekend in Orlando (you can watch here, starting at the 31st minute) and changed an earlier draft of the K-12 education plank (one of five education sections) that had drawn criticism from activists who wanted the Democrats to take a stand against some of the key elements of corporate reform, including on charter schools and test-based accountability. Clinton got booed recently when she appeared at the National Education Association’s convention and touted charter schools (though most of her speech was met with approval).
The first released draft said this:
Democrats are also committed to providing parents with high-quality public school options and expanding these options for low-income youth. We support great neighborhood public schools and high-quality public charter schools and we will help them to disseminate best practices to other school leaders and educators. At the same time, we oppose for-profit charter schools focused on making a profit off of public resources. Democrats also support increased transparency and accountability for all charter schools.
Critics pounced. Veteran educator Peter Greene, for example, said the Democrats needed to understand that charters now operate at the expense of traditional public schools. Education historian and activist Diane Ravitch said that language was unacceptable and that, among other things, the Democrats needed to make a statement opposing corporate replacements for neighborhood public schools.
Democratic negotiators led by Troy LaRaviere, an outspoken Chicago educator who was pushed out of his job as principal of an elementary school by the school district leadership; Chuck Pascal, a Sanders delegate from Pennsylvania; and Christine Kramar, a Nevada delegate, worked to win agreement on key changes to the original language. They got help from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who has been a longtime supporter of Clinton’s, and some of their changes were adopted with little dissent.
Here’s the new charter language:
Democrats are also committed to providing parents with high-quality public school options and expanding these options for low-income youth. We support democratically governed great neighborhood public schools and high-quality public charter schools, and we will help them disseminate best practices to other school leaders and educators. Democrats oppose for-profit charter schools focused on making a profit off of public resources. We believe that high quality public charter schools should provide options for parents, but should not replace or destabilize traditional public schools. Charter schools must reflect their communities, and thus must accept and retain proportionate numbers of students of color, students with disabilities and English Language Learners in relation to their neighborhood public schools. We support increased transparency and accountability for all charter schools.
Among the changes is the phrase “democratically governed” in reference to traditional public schools and public charter schools. The two words actually mean a lot in the charter world, given that charter schools are beholden to the boards that grant them charters to operate, not the general public, and that they are not required to reveal key information about their finances and governance to the public.
The new language also says that charters should not “replace or destabilize traditional public schools.” During the discussion of the vote, Weingarten said, “We can’t have what is happening in Detroit right now, where entities like the DeVos family and the Koch brothers are trying to use charters to kill off public schools.”
There were important changes to the test-based accountability language. The new language comes out in favor of allowing parents to opt their children out of high-stakes standardized tests — a big move by the Democrats, given efforts by the Obama administration to stop the opt-out movement — and it opposes using scores from these tests for high-stakes evaluation purposes.
The old language said this:
Democrats believe that all students should be taught to high academic standards. Schools should receive adequate resources and support. We will hold schools, districts, communities, and states accountable for raising achievement levels for all students — particularly low-income students, students of color, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities. We are also deeply committed to ensuring that we strike a better balance on testing so that it informs, but does not drive, instruction.
The new language says this:
We are also deeply committed to ensuring that we strike a better balance on testing so that it informs, but does not drive, instruction. To that end, we encourage states to develop a multiple measures approach to assessment, and we believe that standardized tests must meet American Statistical Association standards for reliability and validity. We oppose high-stakes standardized tests that falsely and unfairly label students of color, students with disabilities and English Language Learners as failing, the use of standardized test scores as basis for refusing to fund schools or to close schools, and the use of student test scores in teacher and principal evaluations, a practice which has been repeatedly rejected by researchers. We also support enabling parents to opt their children out of standardized tests without penalty for either the student or their school.
The opt-out movement has been growing across the country in recent years, with a growing number of parents deciding that they don’t want their children to take standardized tests whose scores are used for purposes they don’t think are valid. The U.S. Education Department has been for some time pushing states to penalize schools where more than 5 percent of students don’t take the required tests.
The American Statistical Association — the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals — that blasted the high-stakes “value-added method” (VAM) of evaluating teachers that has been increasingly embraced in states as part of school-reform efforts. VAM purports to be able to take student standardized test scores and measure the “value” a teacher adds to student learning through complicated formulas that can supposedly factor out all of the other influences — including how violence affects students — and emerge with a valid assessment of how effective a particular teacher has been.
[Statisticians slam popular teacher evaluation method]
Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest (a nonpartisan 501c3 organization not aligned with any political party or candidate), said that the statements supporting opt-outs and opposing the use of student test scores to evaluate students and teachers are “particularly strong.” He said the Democrats did not take other important steps, such as calling for the banning of all high-stakes uses of standardized tests and a reduction in government-mandated testing.
